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Black Patch Park is a park in Smethwick, England. It is bounded by Foundry Lane, Woodburn Road, Perrott Street and Kitchener Street, at . The park, covering over , was formerly part of a sparsely populated landscape of commons and woodland (known as The Black Patch), dotted with farms and cottages which has been transformed from heath to farmland then to a carefully laid out municipal park surrounded by engineering companies employing thousands of people; Tangyes, Nettlefolds, (later GKN plc), the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company, Birmingham Aluminium Castings, ironworks, glassmaking and brewing. These factories, including the Soho Foundry, started by James Watt and Matthew Boulton are, but for foundations and frontages, almost all gone.〔(Smethwick Local History Society )〕 Much of what is known about Black Patch Park appears in a book by Ted Rudge, developed from an Open University degree thesis, and published by Birmingham City Council in 2003. Rudge's research records how, from the mid-19th century until they were evicted from it at the start of the 20th, the 'Black Patch' was the camping ground of a community of tent and vardo (caravan) dwellers who were to become integrated with 'gaujos' (non-Gypsies) in surrounding districts. The Gypsies on the Black Patch lived on a deep barren layer of furnace waste, which, after their eviction, was cleared down to grass growing soil to create a park.〔Ted Rudge ''Brumroamin: Birmingham and Midland Romany Gypsy and Traveller Culture''. Birmingham City Council Department of Leisure & Community Services (2003)〕 == Situation == Black Patch Park lies 2½ miles from Birmingham city centre just outside the boundary of the city, and is surrounded north, east and south by railway embankments. One of these carries the Birmingham - Wolverhampton part of West Coast main line. That and the A41 and the Birmingham Canal Navigations' Birmingham to Wolverhampton 'Mainline' canals - old and new - are arteries of the region's 'North West Corridor of Regeneration'. In the centre of Black Patch Park, Boundary Brook, which for centuries marked a boundary between Staffordshire and Warwickshire, meets Hockley Brook, which once separated the country villages of Handsworth and Smethwick.〔 Boundary Brook enters from the South, while Hockley Brook comes in from the West under Woodburn Road. The Park is linked to the Birmingham main line canal via a route through Avery Road that connects it to the West Midlands Sustrans Cycle Route 5, running along the canal towpath, part of a National Cycle Network running from the Cotswolds via Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick, Birmingham, and Stafford to Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. Black Patch Park is edged by Foundry Lane to the west and south, Woodburn Road to the north, and Perrott Street and Kitchener Street to the east, beyond which, as far as Handsworth New Road, stretches the triangle of Merry Hill Allotment Gardens. The Midland Metro has a stop nearby.Kitchener Street no longer exists, it was closed and removed due to persistent fly tipping. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Black Patch Park」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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